Achy Obejas: Friday Seminar

Havana-born Achy Obejas is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Days of Awe (Ballantine/Random House, 2001), as well as We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?, Memory Mambo (1994, 1996, respectively, from Cleis Press), and most recently the novel Ruins (Akashic Books, 2009).

An award-winning journalist, she worked for more than 10 years for the Chicago Tribune writing and reporting about arts and culture. Among literally thousands of stories, she helped cover Pope John Paul II’s historic 1998 visit to Cuba, the arrival of Al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Gianni Versace murder, and the AIDS pandemic. She also is a translator and editor of Havana Noir.

In 2001 she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize as part of the Chicago Tribune staff team; received the Studs Terkel Journalism Prize; has twice shared the Peter Lisagor journalism award; was awarded the Lambda Literary Award in 1997 and 2002; and in 1986 was a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellow. She is currently the Sor Juana visiting writer at DePaul University in Chicago.